Previews

Devil May Cry 4

As Producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi's favorite new character, we were particularly excited to get a glimpse of Gloria, a fellow member of the mysterious Order of the Sword. In the scene we witnessed, Gloria slid onto the screen with a serpentine grace that exposed her extremely sensual nature. Totally confident in her ability to render Nero a spluttering blob of confused hormones, Gloria introduces herself with her characteristically sexy acrobatic poses which include seductive splits and lots of low-lidded glances. Of course, as a member of the Order of the Sword, her primary function is to destroy evil demons wherever she finds them, and so her introduction finishes with a display of monster-slaying pirouettes more closely resembling dance moves than the brawling combat of Dante or Nero.

Unfortunately, it appears that Gloria will not be available as a playable character in Devil May Cry 4. It would seem like a no-brainer to us, though.

Knuckles' Contemptuous Cousin

Our demo with Devil May Cry 4 wrapped up with a boss fight featuring Dante and a spine-encrusted worm demon called Echidna. In addition to the winding body of the snake-like Echidna, the creature also has the upper torso of a creepy demon woman hidden within its toothy maw. Ostensibly the core personality manipulating the huge demon body, this unsettling lady spent a few seconds berating Dante verbally before launching into the battle. While taunting Dante throughout combat, Echidna's primary attacks seemed to involve retracting the female torso deep within the body of the worm and striking with fangs from the now girl-free mouth of the beast.

Echidna also drops explosive eggs while snaking in and out of the surrounding forest, making it difficult for Dante to find a decent hiding spot. Occasionally the creature would extend four plant-like appendages to create a sort of botanical nightmare/quadpod and again unsheath the creepy demon woman. Though visually impressive, this maneuver seemed tactically foolish as it allowed ready access for Dante to wreak havoc on the strategy-challenged Echidna. It was classic boss-fight fare, where Dante ducks and dashes until Echidna eventually reveals her weak spot in order to taunt our hero.

It's obvious that Capcom's key concern is ensuring that the game runs as smoothly as possible. From what we saw, the action never dipped below the stated 60 frames per second performance goal, which seemed like quite a feat considering the amount of pixels being thrown around and the fact that this was mere preview code we were watching.

As mentioned, Capcom has announced that a demo of Devil May Cry 4 will be available on each platform's respective online service sometime in early 2008. So, it won't be long before you can jump into the fray yourself.